


Six Things That Didn't Matter

by wizened_cynic



Category: Joan of Arcadia
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-19
Updated: 2005-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizened_cynic/pseuds/wizened_cynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Judith knew, and so did everybody else, that Joan was not nearly as lost as she was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Things That Didn't Matter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hope

 

 

 

 

_The One with the Cheap Kleenex_

At an early age, Judith learned that therapists liked it when she cried.

So, just to spite them, she never did.

She never cried and she never talked about how she felt and she never reflected on her actions and she never walked a mile in anybody's shoes except her own. She did, however, summarize the entire fifth season of _Friends_ once, which was as much introspection as she would allow herself to perform.

She had long mastered the etiquette of surviving the psychiatrist's couch, but she had forgotten to share some of this knowledge with Joan, which was why this sinking feeling came over her when she saw Joan coming out Dr. Dan's office, her eyes red and puffy and raw.

Judith took Joan by the elbow and led her to the bathroom to wash her face. She tried to say something useful, to stop Joan from crying. "God, Dr. Dan is such a stingy ass, he only buys the cheap kind of Kleenex. You know, that kind that falls apart in your hands and totally scratches your eyes like sandpaper when you use them."

"I'm sorry," Joan said, choking back a sob. "I don't know why I'm crying, I'm just -- I must seem like such a freak."

"No, hey, this is Crazy Camp, remember? If there isn't someone crying at any given moment, this place would shut down."

Joan tried to smile, but her lip began quivering halfway and she started to cry again. "Sometimes, it feels like this is all I can ever do." The words stumbled through the hitches of her breathing.

Judith thought she knew the feeling.

_The One with the Diagnosis_

There was this rule at Mental Acres: you didn't ask people what was wrong with them. It was frowned upon by the counselors. Most people obeyed, not because they cared what the counselors thought, but because they eventually figured it out anyway.

Except for Joan.

Nobody could figure out what was wrong with Joan.

There had to be something wrong with Joan, right? Otherwise, what was she doing here, making yarn bowls with manic depressives? Normal parents did not send their normal children to Mental Acres.

Judith didn't see anything wrong with Joan. Hell, Joan was everything Judith wasn't, which pretty much made Joan the poster child for normalcy.

Joan laughed. She laughed and she cried and she hugged and she loved things and she didn't smash windows or steal cars or taste-test the contents of her mother's drug cabinet at age twelve.

Sometimes, though, Judith caught that look in Joan's eyes, the one that everybody at Mental Acres had at some point. Joan looked like she was lost in a crowd of people who couldn't see her, like someone bigger than her was holding her hostage from everybody else.

Those were the moments when Judith felt that she and Joan were on some level, the same.

Except she knew, and so did everybody else, that Joan was not nearly as lost as Judith was.

Once, when they were alone in Judith's room and Judith was running a brush through Joan's hair, she almost asked why Joan was here. "So what's the diagnosis?" she tried to sound casual. Sarcastic.

Joan got that hollow look in her eyes again. "I had this Lyme disease thing," she said in a small voice, and she tried to look like the words didn't scare her but Judith could see that they did, "and, well, I used see people who weren't really ... there."

Visual hallucinations. Symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia.

Right, Joan was as schizophrenic as Judith was normal.

"But you knew they weren't real, right?" She twirled a strand of Joan's hair around her finger.

"Yeah. They're not real. _Definitely_ not real."

"Then you're fine. Not crazy, I mean. Haven't you ever seen _A Beautiful Mind_? That was the big fucking moral of the movie, wasn't it?"

_The One with the New Guy_

Joan did this thing where she would be engaged in seven hundred activities at once, and then afterwards, she'd just be completely still. Quiet. Not really there.

Judith hated these times, and she always tried to distract Joan. Make her build a lamp or crash a game of freeze-tag or play catch near a window. But sometimes Joan simply wouldn't do anything except stare off into the distance.

It was then that Judith wished she were one of those people who could listen and give advice and hug and made people feel better. Well, not _people_. Just Joan.

But she wasn't -- shit, she didn't even know she was capable of caring about another person, and it was still so new and creepy for her -- so she let Joan be.

One afternoon, this counselor guy came up to Judith while she was folding a piece of origami paper into quarters, eighths, sixteenths. He must have been new, but Judith couldn't be sure, since counselors came in and out of this place all the time, and she never gave a shit. He saw her studying Joan, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, coloring madly with a crayon.

"Take care of your friend," the guy said to Judith, smiling. His blond hair fell over his bright blue eyes and he smiled as though he meant it. Not the way the people who ran this place smiled at the campers in that condescending, you're-crazy-I-have-to-calm-you-down way.

He had to be new to this place.

"Leave me alone," Judith snapped, and threw the square of paper at him.

She was afraid she didn't know how.

_~~The One with the~~ _

Judith woke up one night to the sound of Joan crying.

She focused her eyes for a minute before she could discern Joan's figure in the dark, kneeling by her bed. Joan sounded like she couldn't breathe.

Judith reached out and pulled Joan into her bed. She had never held a friend before and tried to comfort her ( _hell she'd never even had a friend before_ ), and she didn't know if she was doing it right.

Maybe her mother had once held her like this, Judith couldn't remember, but she found herself putting her arms around Joan, holding her close, rocking her, letting Joan's head rest on her shoulder. She rubbed little circles in Joan's back and kissed her hair.

"He left," Joan was murmuring into Judith's shoulder, her breath hot against Judith's neck. "He just left and it's like he never was here in the first place. He's not real, I know he's not real, but I miss him, I miss him so _damn_ much."

Tears spilled out of Joan, tears that Judith never could have guessed existed, and for a long time she didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to help, which was nothing new, but for the first time she really wanted to. Wanted to do something more to stop Joan's pain than simply using her sleeve to wipe away the tears on Joan's cheeks.

"I know," she said. "I know."

She didn't know who left, and she didn't need to; she knew the sadness and that was enough.

Judith ran her fingers through Joan's hair, planting little kisses on Joan's shoulder until the sobs died down to quiet little hiccups. Then Joan was quiet, just breathing, in and out, and Judith leaned over and pressed her lips against Joan's.

Joan's mouth was soft and she tasted like salt, and as Judith kissed her she could feel the dampness of Joan's tears against her own face. Judith had kissed people before, but it had been rough and thoughtless and it was just something you did at a party after a couple of drinks -- she'd even kissed girls before, but she had never kissed like it meant something, and kissing Joan now, it meant something. If she was capable of loving anybody, she thought maybe she loved Joan, and it was right and it was wrong and there were fresh tears again, and this time they were her own.

_The One with the Possibilities_

She'd fucked up.

She had fucked up big time. Joan was her best friend, her only friend, and Judith had to go and do something completely stupid. It was one of those things that ruined friendships, she knew; didn't she learn anything from recapping that dumb sitcom to her useless shrink?

She would miss having a friend, and she didn't know she could miss something she'd only had for such a short time.

Or.

Or Judith could shove her away first, before Joan could do it to her.

Judith was, as they said, experienced in that department.

The thought of it made Judith want to throw up. So she put her head down, stared at the floor, and admired the stains on the carpet. There was a gum wrapper near the therapist's feet, and a curled-up ball of Kleenex by the door.

Maybe they just wouldn't talk about it. It didn't matter anyway.

Nothing that happened here mattered out in the real world.

What happened at Crazy Camp, stayed at Crazy Camp.

"Judith," the doctor's voice suddenly broke through her thoughts, "you seem certainly seem occupied today."

"You're gonna ask me what I'm thinking?"

"Perhaps you'd like to share."

"I'm thinking," Judith looked at the pitiful middle-aged man, who thought he ran this place but didn't have a fucking clue what went on, never had a fucking clue what went on, "I'm thinking how much money my parents pay you to ask these pathetic questions."

_The One with Joan_

Judith watched Joan from the other end of the field. Joan was playing outfielder, and she was terrible at it.

Judith stood and smoked a cigarette, her first in days.

She wanted to talk, and she didn't want to talk. She was afraid that what happened between her and Joan mattered, and she was afraid it didn't matter.

Which was funny and -- what was the word for it, yeah, _ironic_ \-- because Judith had spent so much of her life making sure nothing mattered.

Well, like they said, she always could find a way to screw things up.

"You're a good friend, Judith."

She looked up to see Counselor Guy. He was smiling at her again, and there was something about the look in his eyes that made it hurt for her to breathe. Hope, maybe. Pride. Whatever it was, it wasn't meant for her.

"Just what the fuck do you know."

Judith tossed her cigarette onto the ground and crushed it with her heel. Then she turned and walked away, which was what she had always been good at.

 


End file.
